


At Least You

by Archangel7



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: :D, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I don't write comfort :P, I'm Bad At Tagging, also not my best work :P, being told your issues are trivial, cruel writer hands, im dumping my issues on these bois no one can stop me, ok im done, someone give this boi a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28787211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archangel7/pseuds/Archangel7
Summary: What would it take for people to not see his issues as trivial?Would he have to jump in lava? Get his face eaten by Ravager? Die to Vex 15 times in a row?Tango just wants to be taken seriously without having to hear the infamous “if it makes you feel better, at least you...”
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	At Least You

**Author's Note:**

> Second upload this week?? wAow *hides nonexistent sleep schedule* aight-  
> \- :D

It was quiet in Tango’s base. 

It had been quiet for a few weeks now. 

It was never quiet in Tango’s base. 

Tango sat on the fly-in ledge of his blue tower, swinging his feet lazily as the wind tossed his singed blond hair back. He’d spent a lot of time alone at his base these days, pondering every explosive thought that his mind fixated on before jumping to the next excitable thought. 

But one thought had been nagging at him this entire time. Impulse and Zed were out of town for… mental health reasons. Impulse had stopped texting him, while Zed was texting him too much. Texting too much, Tango never thought he’d end up complaining about texting too much (after all, he did spend too much time chatting one-sidedly on his communicator). But when the texting was constant negative dumps, it only took him through more and more spirals of negative thoughts and stress. Every time there was another ding, he had to take a deep breath and mentally prepare himself to be a misery dump. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help them. They needed it, and he was the one they trusted. 

It was that he needed help too. 

But every time Tango turned around and opened his mouth to ask for help, he walked into a wall of excuses. Excuses from other people and from himself, telling him that his issues weren’t worth complaining over. _It could be worse, if it makes you feel any better, at least you…_ he’d heard it so many times, he’d begun to believe it. He forgot who said it to him first, it didn’t matter who said it to him first. It was like a drop of poison in a sippy cup, permeating every thought he had these days, leaving a bitter coating in his mouth with even the fondest memories. 

_I feel lonely_ , you have the most friends of everyone on this server. Affectionate nicknames, group projects of “Tango and Friends”, astronaut murder sessions every Friday, always around people. At least you have friends and social interaction. 

_I’m exhausted_ , _I don’t want to get out of bed,_ you have a sleep schedule. Midnight to eight-thirty, that’s enough sleep to not complain. At least you don’t pull all-nighters, _too bad you weren’t up until 3:30 like me,_ even if you get maybe four hours of actual sleep. You’re just being lazy. 

_I want to cry_ , there’s nothing to cry about. Yeah, you got a desk of work and your two closest friends aren’t around and every morning you feel like you’ve lost your damned purpose to live, but at least you aren’t _physically unable to move_ or _dealing with a breakup_ or _on the verge of being thrown out of a house_ . Your physical health is _fine_ , and your mental health is _fine._ You don’t need to cry. 

_And no one takes me seriously._ Of course no one takes you seriously. You complain about everything, you talk too much, you laugh and scream too much, you don’t _think_ before you talk, who knows when you’re being _serious?_ It’s no wonder that time you cried and couldn’t explain why you were crying that they asked if you were crying for attention. What about that time they called you a clingy little shit and hit you with a laptop and told you to fuck off and you screamed like you always did as if it was just as much of a joke as a TNT prank? That bruise lasted a week.

His thoughts had a tendency of fixing onto one memory or idea and letting all related ones tumble out and swarm him into a muddy puddle of tears and overwhelming or underwhelming emotions. It used to be a blessing, letting him come up with all forms of mustachificators and uses for Jumbo Mumbos and creating a deck building, dungeon crawling, treasure hunting, collect-em-all, trading game.

But with Zed and Impulse away and all the negativity and cloudy days and nights weighing him down, his thoughts began to latch onto… other things. _My thoughts are just as clingy as me… they’re like sticky bombs_. He chuckled despite himself. He was no stranger to rough patches, though usually he had someone to talk to or something to do to distract him, and he could put his “triviality” frustrations to the side temporarily. 

This time… he could only find a friend in silence. He spoke to the cold, gloomy air _as if that made him feel any better. At least he was talking._ At least, he said those words and heard those words until they lost their meaning and existed only to shove down his worries and pull the corners of his mouth up into a forced grin. He was overthinking and he knew it, but there was no one to stop him and his wildfire of thoughts. It was like a cigarette thrown into dry brush; once the idea latched on, he knew that there was no getting rid of it. He didn’t try to get rid of it. There wasn’t much point to getting rid of it. At least he had something to think about.

* * *

Sometimes Tango wished he still had the stress of Decked Out restocking and the Advent Calendar to kick his butt out of bed. At least he could convince himself he had a goal, that he had something to finish that day. 

Now, he lay in bed through the day and ignored texts, ignored phone calls. He didn’t move until he had something to do - which was rare now that his biggest projects were finished. What was the point of doing anything? He wanted to help his friends, but they were dealing with things he couldn’t help with. Empty, it wasn’t like he had anything to be _really_ upset about but he just felt… empty. He missed having something to be excited for, someone to be excited for. Without having work to distract his mind, all the buzzing thoughts flying through his mind were about his emotional state and constant worrying over his friends. 

His doorbell rang. 

Tango screeched as it rang a second time and a third time, yelling a hasty, “gahh- coming, I’m coming!” before scrambling out of his covers. He quickly ran a few fingers through his tangled hair before stumbling out to his storage room. 

Etho was standing at his fly-in window, a finger on his doorbell. He pressed it again, drawing a forced laugh from Tango. “Thought you would’ve been awake by now, Tango,” Etho remarked in his usual smirking voice, a mischievous glint dancing in his eyes. Tango tried to laugh again, but his voice sounded hoarse and weak, and trailed off after a faint “ha…”. 

Etho coughed, as if sensing the awkwardness in the room. “Anyway, are we playing astronaut murder this week?” he asked, leaning his shoulder against the blue wall. He chuckled, adding, “Maybe Brody will do another villain speech, or Bdubs will join us-”

“I’m not planning on playing this week,” Tango replied bluntly. He didn’t have the energy to explain or to even pretend like he’d given it any thought. “They might play without me.” 

“Why not?” 

Tango shrugged weakly. “Busy.” 

“You sure look busy.” Etho said it like an accusation. 

Tango blinked at him. “I just… need this week off,” he sighed, rubbing his temples and not meeting Etho’s eyes. “Maybe next week.” 

“M’kay,” Etho nodded slowly. He opened one of Tango’s rocket chests, leaving him a donation of a stack of free glass and seven diamonds _“for Tango’s Explosive Butt Set - E”_ before flying out the door _._

Tango didn’t have the heart to shout a thank you after him.

* * *

Cold. 

He wasn’t sure when was the last time he’d genuinely slept. Thoughts kept him awake, along with unfinished work, unspoken miscommunicated frustrations, caffeine and adrenaline. _Tango goes to bed at midnight every day and leaves his base at nine in the morning. That’s enough sleep to not complain._ He sat on his bed, listening to the roar of ravagers chomping on iron golems. He changed his sitting position. Flopped his hands around on his knees. Made funny facial expressions in the darkness. Anything to keep his mind off the thoughts that had been plaguing him for the past week. 

Tired. 

He was tired. And he admitted it. But the churning thoughts kept his brain gears turning and turning. Why was he letting these nonsensical thoughts eat away at him? He knew the answer, but he wanted to wonder why. Maybe he could reason himself out of this rabbit hole of overthinking. 

He kept checking his communicator. Typing out paragraphs of thoughts that didn’t make sense and emotional complaints that sounded like selfish attempts for attention, and listening to the continuous clicks of the letters being erased from existence. His mind was a jumble of emotions he couldn’t set straight. 

And it didn’t help that no one wanted to listen to him. 

It felt selfish, wanting comfort from the people who needed the comfort more than him. So he spent his nights not wanting to sleep alone with his thoughts, and spent his mornings not wanting to get out of bed and face the emptiness and negativity of life ready to hit him with a brick. 

He clucked his tongue. Twisted a lock of hair around a finger and untwisted it. He’d tried to cry earlier that night to just unload his emotions and leave this stupid triviality obsession his mind had behind but it stuck to his backside like glue. Sighing, he finally lay down on the bed, blowing a few strands of hair out of his face. The ceiling was so interesting. All plain light blue concrete with zero details. It needed a Jumbo Mumbo. _I wish Jumbo Mumbos could fix all my problems._ The ravager in his ravager launcher growled distantly. 

It was a long three hours before the sun rose.

* * *

How long had it been?

Impulse texted him, finally. He was doing better, but still not okay. Zed was still texting him constantly. He wasn’t okay. 

Tango didn't want to admit to himself, but he couldn't even find excitement in the possibility of his friends coming back to town. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, he didn't want to face their _at least you's_ that they'd wield against his stupid little problems. He wanted to scream, he wanted to throw something across his base and hear it crash satisfyingly against the concrete. Because he was sick, _sick_ of everything, and _sick_ of being told to toss his worries to the wind as if the weight on his chest were as light as a feather and he knew it was selfish and that _he shouldn’t be complaining over little stupid things when his friends needed him more, he couldn’t even explain why he was upset, it’s stupid, stupid, so stupid_ but he just wanted it all to _stop._ He wanted to feel something on his apathetic days, but on the days the tears came pouring and he was curled up on his bed in fetal position, he wanted to feel nothing again. His mind was doing cartwheels of emotions the way it used to do cartwheels of crazy farm possibilities and game designs. 

He couldn’t handle being alone with his thoughts, alone with the knowledge that no one would ever take him seriously, alone knowing he was alone with his worries and alone, truly alone with no one who understood him. He smiled too much, laughed too much, slept too much, worked too much, screamed too much. He used to convince himself that Zed and Impulse would take him seriously, but he knew, deep down, that they didn’t. They didn't have to say the words; it was apparent on their faces, in their tones of voices. _At least you, at least you,_ why would they, when they were dealing with worse? Who cared if he couldn’t pull himself out of bed in the morning? Who cared if he was left feeling like he had no reason left to live, no purpose every morning? Who _cared_ when his issues were nothing compared to everyone else’s around him? 

A ding. 

Impulse was suffering more than him. Zed was suffering more than him. And Tango was in pain, yet the only light left for both of them. He had to smile. He had to comfort them. They didn’t need more negativity, especially not from him. 

He laughed. The sound felt foreign to him, and he realised he hadn’t truly laughed since the day Impulse left. 

Another ding. 

He kept laughing. He didn’t know why he was laughing. The burning tears came next and he was giggling and crying and screaming on the concrete floor of his tower as he hugged his knees to his chest. He didn’t know why he was crying, but all he knew was that he couldn’t stop the frustrations from escaping his lips and pouring out into the emptiness around him. He grabbed at his chest, gasping for breath between sobs. His mind whirled in faster and faster cartwheels, screaming thoughts that he screamed without second thought. He punched his concrete floor, ignoring how his knuckles screamed back at him. He just wanted to feel something, he just wanted to feel nothing again. At the back of his mind, he almost wondered if the Hermits could hear him and knew something was wrong. 

But it didn’t matter, did it. He always screamed like this, he always cried like this, he always hurt like this but _at least._ Sniffling, he gathered himself in a tearstained pile in the corner of his bedroom. _At least you,_ he laughed at the thought of those words. How could three words reduce someone into a mess of sticky sobs in the corner of a cartoon-themed blue tower? He curled his knees to his chest as a gradual, cold acceptance trickled down his spine. No one was going to find him here, and no one was ever going to know. And no one was ever going to care. His worries were trivial and all people would ever see of him would be Santa Tango or “Mr. Ravager”, and he complained about bullshittery and cried cartoon puddles of tears over nothing, and he was alone. But at least he knew he was.

**Author's Note:**

> I rarely ever write Team ZIT soooo no clue how I did on this one :,D I'm still not sure if Tango was the best choice for this one. And bOY was this one all over the place :,,D this also isn't my best work but I also really wanted to get this one done and dusted  
> BUT enough babbling hope you enjoyed <3  
> After this one I may write something larger... stay tuned ;D  
> Anywayyy \o/ Archie out 
> 
> \- archie :D


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